Council President Len Resto points to a PSE&G monopole at the site of the former Chatham Community Garden on Division Street. / Photo by Paul Bonasera

Written by

Paul Bonasera

For the Daily Record

Community gardeners in Chatham are looking for a new place to grow their vegetables and flowering plants after borough officials learned that Public Service Electric & Gas upgrades would put a squeeze on the number of plots.

The utility is upgrading its monopoles on the Division Street tract where the garden leased space. Additional room for the monopoles would have cut the garden about in half, and PSE&G terminated the borough's lease, officials said.

“It’s frustrating, but I feel we will be successful in finding a new spot for 2014,” said Katey DePinto, chair of the Community Garden Committee. “It wouldn’t be worth it for us to have the garden with half the number of plots we now have.”

Two possible new locations for the garden include Garden Park, located near the Chatham Middle School, and property near Watchung Avenue and River Road, on the borough’s side of the Passaic River near the Summit border, said Borough Council President Len Resto, the governing body’s liaison to the Community Garden Committee.

“It’s a tough situation that presented itself,” Resto said. “Our closed Community Garden is no more than a tenth of an acre, and PSE&G says it needs 150 foot radius ground clearance for its Monopoles which would leave an even much smaller space than we had for the garden.”

The once beautiful garden, now closed, has 55 10-by-10-foot, dried-up plots.

Then, PSE&G started replacing their old electricity towers with the new monopoles through the utility’s Chatham right of way last fall.

“The garden was great since it was started in 2010,” Resto said. “The plants flourished through last year’s growing season and the gardeners loved it.”

The monopole clearance PSE&G says it needs would have left the gardeners with less than half their space, Resto said.

“The radius clearance is needed for our utility service trucks to enter the area in an emergency and for ordinary maintenance,” said John Margaritis, PSE&G’s transmission projects communications director.

“With our upgraded transmission lines carrying 230,000 volts, the utility wants to make sure there is enough clearance for maintenance and emergency repairs,” Margaritis said. “We wouldn’t want to have to drive over the gardens to get to the monopoles,” he said.

Growing season work will likely begin on a new garden in spring of 2014, DePinto said.

“We are all very disappointed with what happened to this season,” she said.

“We would have been in a much better position being on borough property, and hopefully that will happen, possibly at Garden Park.”

Officials in 2010 were seeking to open a second garden on another PSE&G right of way on Brooklake Road because the waiting list for the garden was more than 60-people deep. That plan was opposed by Madison residents who, citing traffic concerns, collected 95 signatures for a petition against it.